Table of Contents

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CBS News Call-Back Poll, March 2008 (ICPSR 26145)

Principal Investigator(s):
CBS News

Summary:

This call-back poll, fielded March 20, 2008, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicits public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. This poll surveyed 542 registered voters first interviewed March 15-18, 2008, in the CBS NEWS MONTHLY POLL #1, MARCH 2008 (ICPSR 26144),
which queried respondents on George W. Bush's presidency, the condition of the national economy, the 2008 presidential race, the news media's treatment of the candidates, the effect of race and gender on the choice of a presidential candidate, and sexism and racism in America. In the call-back poll conducted on March 20, 2008, registered voters from the original survey were asked for their reactions to Barack Obama's March 18, 2008, speech on race relations in the United States, how much they had heard or read about Obama's relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whether they agreed with Obama's stance on race relations in the United States, their opinions of him, whether they were more likely to vote for him, and whether he would be the kind of president who could unite the country. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level, marital status, whether respondents had children under 18 years of age, household income, political party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration status and participation history, religious preference, frequency of religious attendance, and whether respondents considered themselves to be a born-again Christian.

This call-back poll, fielded March 20, 2008, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicits public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. This poll surveyed 542 registered voters first interviewed March 15-18, 2008, in the CBS NEWS MONTHLY POLL #1, MARCH 2008 (ICPSR 26144),
which queried respondents on George W. Bush's presidency, the condition of the national economy, the 2008 presidential race, the news media's treatment of the candidates, the effect of race and gender on the choice of a presidential candidate, and sexism and racism in America. In the call-back poll conducted on March 20, 2008, registered voters from the original survey were asked for their reactions to Barack Obama's March 18, 2008, speech on race relations in the United States, how much they had heard or read about Obama's relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whether they agreed with Obama's stance on race relations in the United States, their opinions of him, whether they were more likely to vote for him, and whether he would be the kind of president who could unite the country. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level, marital status, whether respondents had children under 18 years of age, household income, political party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration status and participation history, religious preference, frequency of religious attendance, and whether respondents considered themselves to be a born-again Christian.

Universe:
Registered voters aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.

Data Type(s):
survey data

Data Collection Notes:

The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.

The CASEID variable was reformatted in order to make it a unique identifier.

This call-back poll reinterviewed 542 registered voters who had participated in the CBS NEWS MONTHLY POLL #1, MARCH 2008 (ICPSR 26144).
This data
collection includes their responses to questions from the original poll as well as to the call-back questions. Original survey questions are identified with the prefix "Q", while call-back questions are identified as "RQ".

Variable Q20 contains truncated value labels. Truncated value labels in variables EDUC and Q35 were corrected, and code 38 in variable Q2 was edited to refer to the president in office at the time of the survey. Value labels for unknown codes were added in variable Q35.

This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.

Methodology

Sample:
This call-back poll re-interviewed registered voters who had participated in the original survey (March 15-18, 2008). In the original survey, a variation of random-digit dialing using primary sampling units (PSUs) was employed, consisting of blocks of 100 telephone numbers identical through the eighth digit and stratified by geographic region, area code, and size of place. Within households, respondents were selected using a method developed by Leslie Kish and modified by Charles Backstrom and Gerald Hursh (see Backstrom and Hursh, SURVEY RESEARCH. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1963). The original survey included an oversample of African Americans.

Weight:
The data contain weight variables that should be used in analyzing the data. According to the CBS News Web site, the data were weighted to match United States Census Bureau breakdowns on age, sex, race, education, and region of the country. The data were also adjusted for the fact that people who share a telephone with others have less chance to be contacted than people who live alone and have their own telephones, and that households with more than one telephone number have more chances to be called than households with only one telephone number. An oversample of African Americans was conducted for the original survey and the results were then weighted in proportion to the racial composition of the adult population in the United States Census.

Mode of Data Collection:
telephone interview

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: